Resources and dilemmas of social innovation: A problematic concept

Abstract

Our approach is that the concept of social innovation remains almost undefined due to the unresolved controversies that accompany its success. It is fashionable and in danger to become "a resource for everything", used as an antidote to resort in any kind of situation. In these cases, social innovation becomes an empty content rhetoric, working as container concept, and reducing its theoretical, empirical and analytical possibilities and its practical proposals. The rescue of the concept for scientific purposes lies in the linkage of social innovation studies with social research, to methodologies and analytical strategies provided by social theory and the empirical verification of everything it claims to be and provide. To achieve this goal it is transcendent to address a set of unresolved controversies that currently emerge in social innovation research.